My biggest technical question is why did you choose the apertures you chose? I think both images could have benefited from some bokeh to make the subjects pop a little.

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I'm interested to hear SwissJ answer but when i look at #2, its such bright sunlight i'd assume very wide aperture would take the exposure beyond 1/4000 iso100 - out of options without a filter (at least with my DSLR). Just an impression looking at it. A problem i have in similar situations. I agree some shallow DOF could look good.

For #1 I was on shutter priority at the time focusing on something else, when some rude lady bumped into someone else and just kept walking. The guy was pointing at her. Without thinking too much I just raised my camera and fired.

For #2, yeah the sun was high and harsh, but I definitely should have opened the aperture up more. I did take the f-stop down to 9.0 thinking it would help with the background, but apparently not enough, and I was too worried to go bigger cause of the sun.

The desaturated look is from custom picture styles I created last night. I'm still experimenting with them for now, trying to create an alternative to traditional b&w.